Chris Jarrard


92 games reviewed
69.0 average score
70 median score
45.7% of games recommended
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Sep 26, 2018

It is undoubtedly the best game Microsoft has published on the PC since Age of Empires 2. Forza Horizon 4 is Microsoft's killer app and is on the shortlist of the best games of its generation.

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9 / 10 - Observer
Aug 22, 2017

This is a must play for fans of the genre or anyone looking for a solid scare.

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Nov 2, 2017

This game should not be fun. It has almost everything except its phenomenal mud and vehicle physics working against it. Often unfriendly to the point of misery, Mudrunner asks a lot from those who chose to engage it, but like many classic tough games, success simply feels sweeter. The music choices and achievement prompts are straight out of a PS1-era extreme sports title, but hearing the faint sound of butt rock as you near a lumber mill with your final load of logs re-invigorates you like seeing light after eons of darkness. This is the closest we'll ever get to a video game based on William Friedkin's classic thriller Sorcerer. If you are a fan of non-conventional PC games, I cannot recommend Spintires:Mudrunner enough. 9/10 mudcaked super swampers

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9 / 10 - Conan Exiles
Jun 5, 2018

I played the PC version of Conan Exiles for the purposes of this review. From the perspective of a fairly demanding PC nerd, I found the game to be more than adequate. While it has lots of the classic rough edges common to survival games, it can be outright beautiful at times. I encountered no performance issues on my machine during play and the game has all the graphical options and settings you'd expect from a competent PC release. The game works well with high resolutions, ultrawide configurations, and high refresh rates. I found it to be very playable with the Xbox One S controller, though I used a mouse and keyboard for the majority of my time. The game runs on Unreal Engine 4, so users can expect the usual strong point or quirks common to games that license this popular engine.

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9 / 10 - Dead Cells
Aug 6, 2018

I'm not a big Metroidvania guy, but Dead Cells managed to conjure up the same feelings I had when I played Super Mario World, Portal, and Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl.

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Aug 29, 2018

Sega and its new Two Point Studios have successfully revived the nonsensical hospital management genre with a slick piece of interactive entertainment.

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Dec 21, 2018

Insurgency: Sandstorm was a game that kind of hit me out of nowhere. I knew it was coming at the end of this year and I had intentions of checking it out, but once I finally sat down with it and had a few rounds with friends, time just slipped away.

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Apr 3, 2019

If you have any interest in America’s favorite pastime, you owe it to yourself to step up to the plate with MLB The Show 19

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9 / 10 - Gears 5
Sep 4, 2019

If you never liked Gears of War before, this is not going to be the game to change your mind, as it sticks with the same formula, but does finally evolve the design in a positive way. If you were previously a Gears Stan, then this game is a must-buy.

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9 / 10 - SnowRunner
May 5, 2020

Simultaneously relaxing, infuriating, perplexing, and rewarding, SnowRunner is on my shortlist for game of the year.

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9 / 10 - F1 2020
Jul 6, 2020

All things considered, F1 2020 offers a fantastic experience for Formula 1 fanatics.

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Aug 17, 2020

With everyone looking to the upcoming consoles to provide the next-generation experience, don’t let this one slip off your radar.

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Mar 29, 2021

Ultimately, Evil Genius 2 is a Dungeon Keeper clone in a different coat of paint. The surface has been well-prepped and the paint was applied with great expertise, though. If you consider yourself a fan of simulation-strategy games, this has to go on your must-play list for 2021. 9/10 secret boxing glove traps hidden in corridor walls

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Nov 4, 2021

Forza Horizon 5 is big, loud, and bold. If you found little value in the series before now, this new version will do nothing to change your mind. For the rest of us, the best Xbox game of 2021 is here (at least for another month - there’s still an elephant wearing Spartan armor in the room). The concept of the pack-in game is pretty much dead in 2021, but if it weren’t, Microsoft should be tripping over itself to make the Series X Forza Bundle a reality. We live in the era of Game Pass now, so plenty of folks have the ability to visit Mexico at discount rates. I desperately implore you to take the trip.

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Feb 14, 2022

Total War: Warhammer 3 is a big game by nearly every measure. It hosts big battles across enormous campaign maps, contains multiple armies with unique units, and effortlessly shifts between the Old World and Chaos Realms. It will get even bigger post-launch. It features absolutely gorgeous art in its many cutscenes that marry lush animation with the classic fantasy oil painting style and often hilarious voiceovers. It represents a giant bow on a gift Creative Assembly has been working on for years and is sure to be a can’t miss for Total War and Warhammer buffs alike. Will it change minds for those who bounced off the series in the past? Not really, but this one is for the fans, and I’d wager most folks would be delighted to receive this kind of attention for their favorite IP.

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Mar 2, 2022

The presentation is a bit odd in 2022 and I would have liked to get ray-traced visuals in gameplay, but it doesn’t detract from the high you can get when shaving a few tenths on a flying lap at the Nordschleife. Sure, modern gamers may tell you that Nathan Drake or Aloy are the true mascots of the PlayStation brand, but Sony already had its Mario back in 1997 in the form of the Nissan R32 Skyline GT-R.

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9 / 10 - Teardown
May 2, 2022

Teardown is everything that drew me to video games in the first place. It gives me something I’ve never seen before with its voxel sandbox and marries it with cutting-edge graphics technology. If I was still a kid and you asked me if I wanted to play Monopoly or with the fully-fueled excavator that someone just left in the yard, you can be sure I’m gonna be outside digging up holes and breaking things. Teardown satiates my urge to be destructive while offering nearly endless opportunities through mod support. Calling it a game may be a bit of a stretch on account of its loose structure, but you can’t argue with the fun.

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Oct 26, 2017

I dislike so many parts of the game. Giant chunks of it are littered with tired mechanics and missions filled with tedium. I even experienced the patented Assassin's Creed PC version at launch problems. It has a real money store where you can buy in-game credits to speed up your progress and some of the progression makes me feel like it was engineered to get me to buy these credits. ACO has almost everything going against it, and somehow managed to win me over. Just moving along in the game world is rewarding on its own.

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8 / 10 - Yakuza Kiwami
Feb 26, 2019

I can’t really knock the game down too much for being what it set out to be - a faithful re-imagining of an eastern classic. This is the standard for which all remastered game releases should aim.

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Sep 20, 2017

In a year where many games have arrived light on content and heavy on microtransactions, Project Cars 2 feels like a unicorn. Not once during my playing time was I ever prompted to buy cyber currency or shortcuts to locked content. For players engaged with the simulation-style approach, the amount of options and ways to customize the experience are staggering. The front end menus are bursting with toggles and sliders. While I did not test the game with a VR headset, Oculus and Vive users will be presented with a vast amount of options and can launch the game directly into VR modes via Steam. Graphics setting junkies will find an exhaustive assortment of configuration possibilities, including the fine-tuning of the post-processing features that obscure the field of view, like lens flares, dirt, or raindrops.

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